Wilton Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Smith brought several new cost-saving and programmatic school initiatives to Thursday night’s Board of Education meeting, including a new Wilton Center home for the Community Steps program and a proposal for an in-house business and finance center at Wilton High School.
Business Innovation and Finance Center
Bianca Dilorio, a business education teacher at — and 2016 graduate of — Wilton High School, came up with the idea of creating what is described as a Business Innovation and Finance Center, featuring a trading floor platform and other features aimed at simulating real-world investment opportunities and encouraging entrepreneurship.
“Our vision is to create a comprehensive, dynamic and interactive workspace where students can take their love for learning about business, finance and entrepreneurship to new levels,” the proposal states, calling it the first of its kind. “The purpose is to simulate a real world-trading floor that fosters financial empowerment and best practices in financial education.”
Targeted to cost $95,534, including the installation of a stock ticker, the project would be privately funded by grants from the Boucher and Stroup families.
“We have complete private funding to cover the entire endeavor,” Smith said.
“It’s a home run of a concept,” he said, with experts from the community already reaching out to offer their help in creating curriculum for the center.
BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca called the plan an exciting one.
“That’s tremendous,” she said, “with the space and the potential for there to be community involvement.”
An Advanced Financial Literacy course will also look to “create a student-run investment fund through which students could learn to manage investments in service of supporting local not-for-profits or seeding student-created start-ups,” the proposal states.
Smith said it would be offered next school year.
New School Van
Wilton Public Schools is moving forward with a cost-saving measure to buy its own van and hire a driver for targeted school runs.
“As you know, we’ve been studying our transportation for a couple years now and the cost of providing transportation, private transportation, both in-district and out of district, has escalated, on average, about 6% … and kind of eaten into some of the savings we’ve realized by not out-placing kids,” Smith said.
“By purchasing a van and hiring a driver we’ll be able to consolidate several individual runs that we pay for now,” he said, which cost over $900 per day.
While he said the anticipated cost this year is about $75,000, the district would realize savings of around $20,000 per year going forward.
“For me, it’s another kind of no-brainer opportunity,” Smith said.
He said that if things go well they could try to repeat the move, purchasing another van to do out-of-district runs, which he estimated to currently cost around $1,000 per day.
DeLuca suggested that the van could also be used for some sports programs after school.
“I think even this spring,” Smith said, “our girls’ golf team is fairly small, so there might be an opportunity to pick something up as soon as April.”
He said that the driver, who has not been hired yet, would be a Wilton Public School employee, with licenses and permits not as hard to obtain for the smaller transport vehicle than the large school bus.
Community Steps Lease
The district’s Community Steps program is planning to relocate from the Comstock Community Center to a vacant space next to The Painted Cookie in Wilton Center in the next month or so. The program offers students transitional guidance and future planning related to post-secondary education, employment, independent living and more.
“We’re closing in on finalizing the deal,” Smith said. “This is a tremendous opportunity for our students, to put them in the center of the community.”
“Undoubtedly it’ll open up some opportunities down there,” he said. While the program would need to sign a lease for the space in the building on the Town Green, Smith explained it would be a cost-neutral plan because of savings on transportation.
BOE member Pam Ely spoke in favor of the move.
“It’s a game changer for the kids to be down in the town,” she said.
Smith said there was a small amount of interior site work that needed to be done, owing to the fact that the space has been vacant for a long time.
“I’m hoping, best case, somewhere around the first of March we can relocate the program,” he said.